


MacGuffin(s)

by epithetta



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 14:06:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epithetta/pseuds/epithetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This red button doesn't do anything - press it and see!</p>
            </blockquote>





	MacGuffin(s)

**Author's Note:**

> Written utilising the whoverse_las prompt 1.2, consisting of the photo below the cut.

 

Gwen resists for three weeks, and then one afternoon, whilst copying a report to messenger over to Heddlu, she places one finger on the button, waits, and then presses it down with a satisfying 'click', then lets go.

Nothing happens. She waits for another thirty seconds, then presses it again. Click.

Nothing.

There's a noise behind her and she turns to see Ianto at the beaded curtain, lips twitching. She can feel her face heating. 

Ianto crosses the room, reaches out, and presses the button down in rapid succession, four, five, six times, like sending a Morse code message. 

"I like to think it turns the lights on and off in Buckingham Palace," he jokes.

__button depress=Cooper, Gwen spooling count: 3_

***

Tosh brings up the button three days later, when they're all eating lunch in the conference room. 

"Ianto says you gave in," she chirps, and Gwen doesn't even have to ask what she means. "It's okay, everyone does it."

"I never have," Jack says.

Owen snorts and points his fork at Jack. "You have never pressed red button upstairs. You."

Jack shrugs. "Don't know what it does."

"It doesn't do anything," Ianto says without looking up. "It says so on the sign."

Jack shrugs again and picks up an egg roll, but he just peers at the wrapper. "You don't actually _know_ that."

"Finally," Owen mumbles, "a button you won't press."

Later, Gwen notices that the sign has been changed to, 'JACK, PRESS ME FOR A FREE ORGASM.'

She presses it out of curiosity.

__button depress=Cooper, Gwen spooling count: 22_

***

After that, the sign is a free for all:

_WORLD PEACE BUTTON. DO NOT PRESS._

**Weevil replication machine**

'EVERY TIME YOU PUSH ME, GOD KILLS A KITTEN.'

~~_When pressed in the right sequence, I summon delicious caek._~~ **THE CAKE IS A LIE.**

Gwen comes in one morning to Ianto poking at the edges of the box with a common screwdriver. He glances at her distractedly and then simply returns his stare to the box. 

"I was thinking that if we could open it and see what's inside, we'd figure out what the button was supposed to do."

Gwen hands him a coffee. "Maybe it used to open cargo doors. This was once a dock, after all."

Ianto sips from his coffee and his mouth twitches. "Maybe."

__button depress=Cooper, Gwen spooling count: 267_

__button depress=Jones, Ianto spooling count: 2396_

***

Tosh smiles at the new sign: _How are you gentlemen? All your button are belong to us._ She doesn't know what the button does, nothing obviously, or they would know by now, actually, but it's been here since she has.

Owen and Ianto argue that if it did anything bad they would have found out, because they've been pressing it like idiots for ages. Tosh prefers to save it, save it for times when she doesn't know what to do, or when she's stuck on something downstairs, or when she needs a little bit of good luck. Like rubbing Buddha's belly. Gwen says she presses it because it's there.

Tosh stands in front of the box and thinks about her mother, who is having surgery later this week for a growth in her stomach. It could be cancer, it could be something else. Tosh wonders if it wasn't residual radiation from a certain sonic modulator.

"Toshiko," comes Jack's voice over the intercom in the front room. "Toshiko, get yourself down here and finish this wave sensor or I'll let Owen go through your desk."

Tosh rolls her eyes, takes a breath, and reaches out to touch the button. It's hard under her fingers, rounded like the belly of a god.

_Click._

__button depress=Sato, Toshiko spooling count: 393_

***

Jack chuckles at the sign and runs his finger over the red button, but doesn't apply pressure. Ianto bites his lower lip as he watches him. Jack sees him watching and hums a little burlesque tune, rubbing the button but not pressing, almost pushing, then pulling back with a wink.

"You're a jackass," Ianto tells him, turning to leave the room for the main lobby of the TIC.

Jack laughs. "Oh, don't be that way," he says, reaching for Ianto's tie and reeling him in like a fish. "Insert joke about pressing your button here."

"That joke is so tired it's unconscious," Ianto gripes against Jack's mouth. 

"Mmm." Jack nods, picking at Ianto's tie with his fingers. "That joke is older than your grandmother falling off a dinosaur."

"We have a dinosaur," Ianto tells him. "And my grandmother is quite spry."

Jack licks a stripe along Ianto's jaw. "I wonder if she'd press the button."

"Probably not. She believes in Hell."

Ianto lets Jack turn him so that his back is pressed against the box. It doesn't really hurt, not when he rearranges his arms and then angles himself; and then everything is loosened, including him, and he doesn't really pay attention to what his elbow is doing, or the _click click click click click._

__button depress=Jones, Ianto spooling count: 4662_

***

Jack disappears.

The sign is replaced with, 'Every time you push this button, Jack is stabbed in the face.'

Gwen catches Owen duct taping the button down.

__button depress=Harper, Owen spooling count: 4698_

***

The world ends. Sort of. Torchwood goes to the Himalayas and doesn't return.

Mainframe goes on. Files are still collated and sent to inboxes. Those boxes fill up and messages bounce back and forth inside the Torchwood system. Mainframe creates new boxes to store these things until Hartman, Yvonne can retrieve them. They are labelled and indexed, all assessments complete, or at least up to date.

**_button depress programming disaster event calculating...**

**_button depress=Cooper, Gwen spooling count: 1691  
_button depress=Harper, Owen spooling count: 4879  
_button depress=Costello, Suzie spooling count: 1  
_button depress=Jones, Ianto spooling count: 6798  
_button depress=Sato, Toshiko spooling count: 457  
_button depress=Harkness, Jack spooling count: 0**

**disaster survival estimation percentage rate:**

**Cooper, Gwen: 67.45  
Jones, Ianto: 22.21  
Sato, Toshiko: 84.78  
Costello, Susie: 99.99  
Harper, Owen: 36.94  
Harkness, Jack: 100.00**

END


End file.
